Sustainable Kids Design and Lifestyle

Beginning of our gardening journey

Although I have always loved being in gardens and appreciated the grow-your-own lifestyle, I didn’t really see myself doing just that one day, growing-my-own food or even attempting to.

However, after a couple of years of living in the country, it seemed like such a natural thing to do so i took it upon myself recently to utilise our vegetable garden for growing other things than weeds and dandelions.

It seemed a waste not putting it to good use as it was already there. So one day after school, we got started.

Kids getting our vegetable patch ready for some fun amateur growingVegetable patch after a couple of days turning, weeding and drying out. The fun could begin.Compost and plant shoppingMixing in some fresh compost in the ground as existing soil is too hard and muddy and creating raised beds. Also added some stepping stones, using broken tiles that we had hidden behind our shed.Sorting out the strawberry plants into different varieties.Planting Time. Should have waited until it wasn’t so hot out there but couldn’t wait. I am too impatient. Strawberries are apparently quite resilient, so fingers crossed.Good luck strawberry plants. May you live a long fruit-ful life.Broccoli plants to be transplanted. Found out after we had planted them that we should have watered them and made soil wet before transplanting … but didn’t matter in the end as they all died anyway. Will talk about that in separate post.My son didn’t want to grow vegetables but only wanted flowers. Fine, as long as it keeps him happy, right ?Rows of flowering plants.Some final clearing up and digging before we water our growing garden and head inside for some well deserved food.First day of planting. Let’s see what adventures this will bring us all on. Managed to find some old ceramic pots, a wooden wine box, an old chalkboard painted desktop and some old planters to decorate the back wall with for now. This give it a focus and draws your eyes into the space.Every garden needs some cute little garden rabbits. Don’t you think ?

Things we learnt about gardening so far:

1, Gardening is a lot of fun.

2, The best and perhaps easiest way to weed is to keep turning the soil and get rid of whatever you can before planting.

3, Be patient. Prepare the soil properly before attempting to transplant any seedlings as having to pull them all out again after to improve soil conditions doubles the work. I found this out after i planted everything and decided that I needed to raise the beds and had to dig all seedlings back out and start again.

4, As a novice gardener, start with seedlings rather than seeds. It makes weeding a whole lot easier as you can tell what leaves are supposed to be there.

5, Don’t get frustrated if some of the plants fail to take roots and grow. It will happen even to the more experience gardeners.

6, Courgettes need warmer weather. I transplanted ours too soon and they all wilted and died.

7, Cucumbers also need warmer weather.

8, Birds love broccoli and cauliflower. Make sure you protect the seedlings with a net or something or they will all get eaten in no time.

9. Don’t get too carried away with buying too many plants as you need to make sure there is enough space between each one for them for maximum growth. Better buy a few to try and go back for more if necessary.